All The Days of My Life

by Hilary Bailey

  A window went up at the house next door. “What on earth are you doing?” came an indignant voice. Mary did not even look up. She went on banging on the door. The sound filled her head.

  “The people you want are obviously not there,” said the voice, a woman’s. “Will you please stop that noise?”

  Molly, now hysterically fascinated by her own rhythmic knocking on the door, began to shout, “Open the door – I know you’re in there. Open the door, you bastards – I know you’re in there. Let me in. You’ve got to let me in.”

  Behind her a man’s voice cried, “Shut up! If you don’t stop immediately I’ll call the police.”

  “Open this door, Johnnie,” Molly shouted. “Open this door!” She was banging wildly and still shouting when it opened.

  “What are you here for?” said a woman’s voice. Molly shouldered in. Amanda Walton, who had backed into the small, square hall as she pushed through the door, was tall, with dark hair swinging loose on her shoulders. She wore a white nightdress with a lace top and a kimono over it. She smelled of sex and this, for some reason, sobered Molly.

  “What do you want?” she asked. She was a girl, very little older than Molly.

  “I want Johnnie,” said Molly.

  “Johnnie isn’t here,” said the other.

  “I’ll look,” said Molly, starting up the stairs. The girl caught her arm. “Where do you think you’re going? This is my house.”

  “Oh – sod off,” cried Molly, throwing off her hand.

  As she started to gallop up the small flight of stairs Amanda, her voice shaking, called “Johnnie!”

  Johnnie appeared on the landing wearing a paisley silk dressing-gown. His face, above the girlish material, was heavy and sullen. He had obviously just woken up. Molly stopped and stared up at him. He stared expressionlessly back at her.

  “What’s the trouble, girls?” he asked. “What are you doing here, Molly?”

  Molly suddenly realized that he had been through many such scenes before. She had not and neither, she guessed, had Amanda.

  “You ponce,” she said. “You bloody ponce.”

  “Tell her to go away, Johnnie,” Amanda cried. “She’s been beating on the door. She’s woken everyone up. I want her to go.”

  “You come down here and talk to me,” said Molly angrily to Johnnie.

  “Look, Molly – I was asleep,” he told her.

  “In her bed,” shouted Molly. But there was something about the weary Johnnie and the replete, well cared for Amanda which made her feel shoddy, grubby, and exhausted.

  “Well, I should say that was his business,” said Amanda loudly. “And now you’ve seen what you came for, will you please go away? You’ve no right to be here.”

  “I’ve been slaving for him,” said Molly in a low voice, feeling all the more at a disadvantage. What did this girl know about work, about relationships hinging on work and wages, on paying the rent and caring for the children? A wave of horror came over her. She felt sick. She looked up at her handsome Johnnie, no longer hers, and tears came to her eyes.

  “Johnnie –?” she said, in a wavering voice, still expecting comfort and reassurance.

  “Go home, Moll,” he said despondently. “Please go home. I’ll talk to you later on.”

  Then she remembered why she had come and said in a low voice, “I came about the club.”

  “What?” he said, now sounding annoyed. “What about the club? Can’t it wait?”

  “I’m going into the other room,” Amanda said clearly. “And I want this woman out of here straight away. All this is too ridiculous.” She turned and began to go through the doorway. Molly said to Johnnie, “There’s trouble.”

  Johnnie, about to protest again, pulled the dressing-gown further round, retied the belt and started to come downstairs. He knew it was serious. He asked Amanda, “Do you mind if Molly and I go into the kitchen to discuss something?”

  “I do, as a matter of fact,” replied Amanda. She did not move.

  “I don’t think you’re going to want her to hear this,” Molly told her.

  He looked at her angrily.

  All he could reply, in embarrassment, was, “Don’t be stupid. Tell me what it’s all about.”

  She said quickly, “I’ve been adjusting the payments to the bank day by day so it didn’t look as if you –” She glanced at Amanda and said, “So you didn’t seem to be making deductions before it was paid in. Now Simon’s caught me. He says he’s got to tell the Roses, so they don’t think he did it because – well, because they’ll get back at him.” She paused and told him, “I’ve come to warn you.”

  “Warn me what?” cried Johnnie. “Do I own that club or do I not?” But the vainglorious claim, made for the benefit of Amanda, who was now leaning against the wall with her arms folded, deceived none of them. Both women knew Johnnie was frightened.

  “What are you going to do?” she asked.

  “Go home, Molly,” he said pityingly. “Get some sleep. I’ll talk to you at nine o’clock.”

  But it was all bluff, she knew. He was afraid and when nine o’clock came he would be far away. It was cold on the way back to the club and she began to stagger. Sobbing, she walked among the empty tables, over the carpet, where cigarette ends lay. She breathed in the stale air, looking at the panelling and the pictures of which she was proud. She hauled herself up the stairs to the flat and lay down on the big bed, with its headboard in the shape of a vast, golden shell. She thought of the early days at Meakin Street with Johnnie, and then, still in her clothes, fell asleep for a few hours.

  Morning brought her a sick headache and more, sudden memories of how it had been with her lover when they had first met. How they had laughed and made love, how Johnnie had been a man, then, and not somebody in a dinner jacket, flashing smiles at flighty upper-class girls. He went straight and he went rotten, she thought to herself. At least before, when he was thieving, he’d had to use his brains and he’d risked getting caught and sent to prison. Here, at the club, it was easy. Money from the punters, in goes Johnnie’s hand and whoops-a-daisy he’s down the street with his pockets full of cash.

  The phone rang. It was the wine merchants, asking for payment and saying they would have to stop further supplies if the account was not paid. Johnnie’s job, she thought, to pay the drink bills. Wearily she told them to send another account, this time to the Roses. It rang again. This time it was Simon Tate. He said, “I thought I’d better ring to tell you I telephoned Norman Rose half an hour ago. He forgave you. He just called you a stupid tart and things like that. But he’s furious about Johnnie. Did you find him last night?”

  “He was where you said he’d be,” Molly told him.

  “I’m sorry,” said Simon. “Anyway, Norman asked me if you’d warned Johnnie and I said I thought you might have done. He didn’t seem surprised.”

  “What did he say?” Molly asked.

  “He said, ‘We’ll find him, don’t worry.’ He sounded perfectly calm.”

  “Of course they’ll find him, sooner or later,” Molly said bitterly. “They have to do these things to show they’re still in charge. Otherwise people would think they’d lost their grip and start taking liberties.”

  “I wouldn’t be in Johnnie’s shoes,” remarked Simon. “Still, it serves him bloody well right. You take off, forget him, forget the Roses and the whole seedy business. I’m off to Kenya – I’ll come and see you when I get back. Where will you be?”

  “Try 19 Meakin Street,” said Molly. “I think I’m going back to my mum and dad and my kid.”

  “Maybe you’re not so unlucky,” Simon said. He sounded very tired.

  And so, saying goodbye to the others and explaining what had happened, Molly Flanders, née Mary Waterhouse, took the bus back to Meakin Street.

  Ivy was partly distressed and partly pleased to see her wan daughter back on the step with her cases beside her. “Mum, I’ve come home,” was all Molly said. And Ivy, who had always predicted that n
o good would come of a West End life with a handsome no-good lover, just told her, “Come in.”

  Little Josie, now two, ran to greet her. “Nice to have you home, love,” Ivy said. “Cup of tea and tell all about it?”

  Of course, I’ve got to tell you the other beautiful part of the situation because, naturally, no sooner was Johnnie well away than I fell for a baby. I was stupid. I still thought he’d help me – it’s funny how you go on trusting some men whatever they do. I suppose you can’t believe all that passion and strength of feeling could ever go. You’re like some victim of the KGB – they’ve kept you awake and tortured you and kept you awake and tortured you until you’re programmed. You’re like a slave. I reckon pleasure can do that, too, and love. You get conditioned. You can’t believe really they’ve changed. So, of course, when I started feeling rotten and I didn’t know what to do who did I get in touch with – Johnnie’s parents, who else? I left a message it was urgent. I wished I hadn’t. He sent a shabby-looking geezer down to Ivy’s with a message and I went to meet him in a cafe in Brixton Market. Full of steam and the smell of frying chips, horrible and rancid and no good to me in my condition. He looked bad himself, for Johnnie, that is. Shoes a bit scuffed, shirt not too fresh – I knew he couldn’t go back to his parents for long just in case the Roses turned up there. Whatever they would have done to him wouldn’t have been pretty and the place could have been smashed up accidentally as well.

  So we sat there and he bought me a cup of tea. The market people sat around having cuppas and sandwiches and I remember the fat woman behind the counter kept on looking at us. Johnnie kept looking round, too, staring out of the window at the housewives with their shopping baskets.

  First thing he said when he put the tea down was, “I can’t stop here long.”

  “I guessed as much,” I said. “What’s happening?”

  “They’ll put me in hospital, or worse, if I don’t hand back the money, that’s what’s happening,” he said. “Razors, they said,” and he touched his cheek with his hand. You saw a lot of people about then with razor scars on their faces – if you had any sense when you saw them you looked the other way. I imagined Johnnie’s face with a deep scar down his cheek from his eye to near his lips. That would be if he was lucky – those old-fashioned cut-throat razors could take your nose half off. Johnnie was horrified at the thought of losing his looks, I could tell. Also a razor scar was like a brand. Once you had one, people could tell who you’d been mixed up with.

  I said, “How much?” and he told me two thousand. Not bad for a few months’ work. Then he asked me for it – the two thousand, I mean. “I know it’s the limit, Moll,” he said. “I know I haven’t done you any good. But I love you. I never loved that upper-class slag. She bored me rigid, as a matter of fact. And I don’t know how much longer I can hold out with no money and nowhere to go.”

  And he looked me in the eye and gave one of his famous smiles. He thought he was talking to Molly Flanders, girl in love and great romantic, I suppose. Who he was talking to was a pregnant girl in a Brixton cafe. I looked him in the eye and the smile faded like the Cheshire cat’s. It’s hard on men, really. First the fun and the love and the good times – then you’re pregnant and what you really want is a decent bloke who’ll make you a cup of tea when you ask him and bring in some steady wages. And someone like Johnnie really isn’t like that and can’t be – so when they turn on the charm it falls flat as a pancake. Anyway, I didn’t have two thousand pounds or anything like it. Admittedly I’d been sending a lot for Josie because Arnie did raise my wages when I asked him, like Simon told me – and I used to get big tips, sometimes a tenner or twenty quid a time, from the big winners – but all there was left was a few quid that Sid had put in the bank for me. But I wasn’t going to tell Johnnie that because I could see now I was going to need it, need it badly. I just said, “Johnnie. I’ve got no money and you know it. I can’t help you, I really can’t. And there’s something else-”

  He looked at me like he really hated me. I was afraid, although I knew it was a baby’s look on a man’s face. Josie used to look like that when you refused her something she’d set her heart on – because she’d think you could give her anything, only you just wouldn’t. But on a man’s face that expression can scare you. He said, “You must have put something away –”

  I said, “Johnnie – I’m pregnant.”

  He burst out, then. He said. “Oh – you stupid, bleeding cow. I don’t need this. I don’t need this at all. Why the fuck didn’t you think?”

  “What am I going to do, Johnnie?” I said. I was nearly crying, partly because I knew I was daft and it was hopeless to ask him for anything. He wouldn’t do anything. He couldn’t anyway. But what he could have done was been nice to me – and he wasn’t going to do that either.

  “What do you think?” he said. “Get rid of it. What do you expect me to do? Marry you and buy a house? What can I bloody well do, Moll? I can’t help myself, let alone you. Why in Christ’s name did you have to doit?”

  I’ve noticed fatherhood is optional from the word go. A bloke can say “We’re having a baby” or “She’s having a baby” but no one can ever say “He’s having a baby” without knowing it’s a bit of a joke. It stays a joke like that forever after, too. But at the time, sitting in that fat-smelling cafe with my stomach churning and a terrified man in front of me, it was a joke I couldn’t see.

  I said, “I didn’t do it on my own, you know.” I must have muttered but a woman sitting at the next table overheard. She was a market trader. She was wearing a big apron with a front pocket for the money. And she shot me this look which said, “Poor cow – he’s not going to be much help to you, is he?” Then she put a fag in her mouth and went back to staring at the Formica top of the table.

  I just stood up and said, “Well, thanks a lot for your help, Johnnie. Do the same for you some time, I hope.” He looked at me hopelessly and I was leaving when something struck me and I asked, “Won’t your mum and dad get you out of this trouble?”

  “Dad won’t,” he told me. “It’s all right, Moll. I’ll have to borrow it off Nedermann.”

  “Congratulations,” I said and left, angry as I’ve ever been in my life, I suppose. So he had an out, after all. He’d asked me for money when all the time he knew he could borrow it. But he didn’t want to because he knew Nedermann would make him pay it back, one way or another. He’d rather borrow from a woman, because debts to women aren’t serious. They don’t come down on you hard if you don’t repay. And after I’d been angry I felt numb and sad and finished. What choice had he, after all? Either take money from Ferenc Nedermann or let the Roses mark his pretty face – and worse. Nedermann would let him have the money. He was building up at that time. He’d started just after the war, buying up old slum property and letting it out to people desperate for housing. The building rate had never caught up with the effects of the bombing and the post-war baby boom made sure places were needed. At that time you could get hundreds, even thousands, of pounds just to get into a flat or a house and now the immigrants from the West Indies were beginning to come over Nedermann was doing even better. People didn’t want black tenants so he could get any price he liked for cramming families into single rooms.

  What he did to get the old tenants out of his houses wasn’t too pretty either. But one thing was certain – whatever Johnnie got from Nedermann there’d be nothing for me. I don’t know what I wanted when I went to meet him, whether it was for him to go down on one knee in the cafe and say he was desperate to marry me or whether I just wanted a few quid towards the cost of the abortion. Or maybe just a “sorry” would have helped. But whatever I’d wanted I’d got nothing, not even the “sorry”, and when I left the place I walked and walked, feeling my feet were made of lead and my head full of cotton wool until finally I realized I’d be better off in a taxi.

  On the way back we went through Soho and, because it was getting dark, there were all the girls out on the pavement
already, in the drizzle, leaning up against walls and lamp posts, taking slow strolls up and down their bits of pavement and the usual swarthy chaps in good clothes standing at a distance and watching. And sure enough, as luck would have it, I spotted Peggy Jones there, walking up and down outside a restaurant. She was heavily made up and I knew why she was there. Next I saw a man go up and say something to her. Then she went round the corner with him. I leaned back against the seat in the taxi feeling as sick as a dog. I remembered her as a backward kid in Framlingham staying with the vicar’s mad wife. I remembered her from Meakin Street. Then they’d condemned Tom Totteridge’s stable as unfit for habitation and the Joneses, mother and daughter, had disappeared. I thought, My God, she’s hardly any older than I am. And I thought, Look at your life, Mary Waterhouse – one kid at sixteen by a chap who got himself hanged and now you’re in the club again by the likes of Johnnie Bridges. You’d better pull yourself together, I told myself, or there’s nothing to stop you winding up on the pavement beside Peggy. There’s not too much standing between you and a beat in Soho.

  So that was how I fetched up in a back room at Mrs Galton’s on the other side of the High Street. I had to lie on the floor on the usual sheets of newspaper while she injected the usual syringe of soapy water, or whatever she used, into my womb – and then I had to hobble home. While she did it I thought, oh, you lie in the bed in your delight with your legs up and then you’re on the floor on sheets of newspaper in the same position. See what I mean? The two things are similar? Then you, the wild rover, cripple off back to Mum. Afterwards, of course, you wait for the famous “something to happen.” Ivy was very good about it and Sid didn’t say anything, although I knew she’d told him. He looked pretty grim, though. What I didn’t know was that a few months before a girl had collapsed and nearly haemorrhaged to death on a bus he was on. She was going home from a backstreet abortionist’s. Luckily the conductor of the bus was a woman and she’d spotted what was happening and made the driver go off route to get the girl to the nearest hospital. But Sid had seen the blood everywhere, and the girl stretched out on the floor, white as paper. No wonder he looked pale himself when he heard what was happening to me. He must have been terrified. It had to be getting on for Christmas, too.